This research is based on the assumption that the relationship between the Colombian society and violence is so constant and deep that the new 21st century literature is the result of this phenomenon.
Despite the fact that previous academic research on violence and literature in Colombia has largely addressed the topic, this same research has usually approached “violence” as a disruptive phenomenon having an impact on established social orders. That is the case of previous analysis addressing either the 1950s and 1960s’ La Violencia-based literature or the 1980s and 1990s’ drug trafficking literature. However, in the literature of the new generation of writers, violence is not necessarily practiced by traditionally violent actors who intentionally put social order at risk. This social order is in fact essentially violent, which turns violence into a symbolic, normalized, deeply rooted matter in society.
Thus, how has “traditional” violence transformed into today’s neoviolence? Which are its attributes? Furthermore, how does literature tell this new violence’s story? The purpose of this research is to identify these new forms of violence made evident in the literature of the first decade of the 21st century that has been produced, in turn, by writers born between the 1970s and the 1980s. The methodology, based on the analysis of novels and short stories by Colombian writers from this period, seeks to establish how overexposure to endemic violence has resulted in new forms of seeing, perceiving, feeling and recounting violence beyond the accurate description of violent facts.